Unreal Championship
Unreal Championship is the third entry in the ''Unreal'' series, and the first launched for the Microsoft Xbox console. It was co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, and released on September 24, 2002. It was released only six days prior to the release of Unreal Tournament 2003, the fourth entry in the series. __TOC__ Synopsis Overview The game is essentially a console version game of the PC-based Unreal Tournament 2003, developed specifically to take advantage of Xbox Live, Microsoft's online gaming service. In 2003 Unreal Championship was added to Microsoft's "Platinum Hits" line of Xbox games. It was followed in 2005 by Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, also for Xbox. Development history Unreal Championship began its life as a product of Digital Extremes. It was announced in May 17, 2001, roughly a year and a half after UT was released. According to Dave Ewing, the game took about a year and a half of development. James Schmalz adds that nearly 23 developers were working full-time on the game, and Steve Sinclair says that the biggest hurdle the dev team had was the support for Xbox Live. As is usual on game development, many ideas and features were cut or didn't pass the planning phase such as crossplay with the PC version (which was dropped because there were too many things to bear in mind to make this a possibility) and user-made custom content (which got cut due to a lot of "cross-platform issues"). UC was also intended to be a more massive game with up to 64 players on one enormous map and would feature drivable vehicles, as the beta version of BR-IceFields can attest, which were eventually cut because they created a lot of issues such as memory constraints and problems with map sizes that would take the focus from the real work that needed to be done on the game. Vehicles eventually found their way onto Unreal Tournament 2004, though. As for the stuff that didn't made in from the beginning, the Ripper got taken out because it was a very 'spammy' weapon, and kills were racked up mostly due to randomness, and the Arena mutator used to checklist certain guns, but it had weird interaction with other mutators, so it got simplified. Autododge was disabled was because too many people were doing it by accident during the testing phase, since it's pretty sensitive. Also, some PC maps in 2003 got taken out of Championship because their layout didn't translate well to console play, whereas other maps were too big memory-wise to be included in UC; on the other hand, the ten console-exclusive maps were designed with console play in mind. Finally, the Shock Rifle was also nerfed in hopes to prevent the overspecialization in one weapon. Release dates * November 12, 2002 - Original Xbox Release * August ??, 2003 - Re-released under the Platinum Hits Xbox branding. Post-release content Unreal Championship is the first console game ever to receive a downloadable patch. This caused a lot of controversy over the viability of post-release game patches for console games. Some of the exploits fixed by this patch are stats, balancing of teams and getting outside of the boundaries of the maps, as well as some exploits involving the T.A.G. Rifle. It also tackles some problems with frame rate in some maps and implements real-time voice control. Also released for the game as a free downloadable is a Bonus Pack. Game content Gamemodes The game features a single-player ladder similar to those of 2003 and 2004, where the player drafts a team and rise up in the Tournament ladder until the final matches. It also features six botmatch/multiplayer gametypes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Double Domination, Survival and Bombing Run. While CTF, BR and DDOM use their own set of maps, DM, TDM and Survival use the Deathmatch set of maps. Characters The game featured the same six races of Unreal Tournament 2003 with the same array of characters. Some of them were renamed and their bios changed, though. * Anubans * Automatons * Gen Mo'Kai * Juggernauts * Mercenaries (humans) * Nightmares Weapons The regular arsenal of Unreal Tournament 2003 can also be found here, with the exception of the Redeemer. Items Mutators Soundtrack The game's music was written by Starsky Partridge. Reception The game was not well received since it didn't offer many features that were promised, even though the game's box cover mentioned those features as available out of the box, or through future downloads. This disappointed many buyers. Credits Trivia * At some point, someone discovered that a player could lock onto another player and still remain locked onto that player while turning around or switching weapons. When the player did that and shot three rockets at another player in open areas, the physics of the rockets would malfunction and make the rockets move faster. If a player tried to dodge them, they would almost do an S-curve, swing back around, and hit the player right in the face. Many online players referred to this technique as "Rocket Whoring". It got this name because it could be exploited on servers with auto-aim disabled when using characters whose weapon affinity was the Rocket Launcher. The most typical character was "Memphis," which combined with the Anuban class' air control boost, make the rocket glitch somewhat easier to dodge. There is an assortment of maneuvers a player can do to avoid being hit, but they are difficult and therefore annoying. When Digital Extremes halted development on the game, the spamminess of the rocket glitch came to be considered one of the biggest reasons that the game's online community failed shortly after the patch was released. Gallery Unreal Championship - Original XBOX Trailer External links and references * Unreal Championship @ Wikipedia See also * Unreal Tournament 2003 * Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict